The Princess Mentality

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

How's the Weather?

I can't remember when we had our last tornado warning. Before last night, that is. I woke up at 1:00 A.M. to extreme thunder and lightening, turned on the TV and discovered there to be a tornado warning for my county. Although no damage occurred in my immediate vicinity, only a few miles away there were trees down everywhere. No major injuries- thank God - but scary, nonetheless.

This morning, the sun came out, resulting in a gorgeous (though VERY HOT) day. Tonight, more storms are predicted.

I'm sure it's not much different where you live. The weather changes faster than you can say "the meteorologists got it all wrong--again."

The same can be said of our writing journey, can't it? One minute, we're basking in the afterglow of a raving critique, the next, we're bawling our eyes out because of a rejection. One minute, our plot is coming together, the next we're ready to feed the entire manuscript to the shredder.

Read the following descriptions and see if you can identify your current weather condition.

SUNNY: Things couldn't be better. You're happy with the way your story is progressing. You're winning or finaling in contests. You've acquired an agent. You've been offered a contract!

PARTLY CLOUDY: Things are okay, but a few shadows cover the sun. Your manuscript has been requested by a publisher but it's been months since you've heard anything. There's one area of your story that won't quite come together. You received great scores from one contest judge and ridiculously low scores from another.

RAINY: You feel like quitting more days than you feel like pressing on. You just received your twelfth agent rejection. Every one of your contest scores were much lower than you anticipated.

STORMY: You're ready to bag this writing dream altogether. Your agent informed you that it's time to give up on the book you've been submitting to publishers and move on to something else. Your computer crashed and you didn't back up your 80,000 word manuscript.